Optical connectors provide releasable connections of optical waveguides in an optical communications system. They serve for example for the optical connection of an optical waveguide to a transmitter or receiver of an optoelectronic transceiver or for a coupling with a further optical waveguide.
A large number of standardized and commercially available optical connectors are known. Of these, small-form-factor (SFF) connectors have a particularly small form of construction and can be inserted into the optical port of what are known as small-form-factor (SFF) transceivers or small-form-factor-pluggable (SFP) transceivers of a small type of construction.
Two of the most popular SFF connectors are the LC connector and the MT-RJ connector. The LC connector has a ceramic pin with a diameter of 1.25 mm. The latching engagement is realized by an RJ-45 mechanism on one side. For the optical coupling to an optoelectronic SFF or SFP transceiver, it is envisaged to form an LC duplex connector from two LC simplex connectors by an interlocking means.
An MT-RJ connector has two glass fibers arranged with a spacing of 750 μm in a connector housing with an RJ-45 mechanism. Provided to the sides of the glass fibers are two guiding bores or two guiding pins.
It is endeavored to reduce the known SFF and SFP transceivers further in size, in particular to provide reduced SFF and SFP modules of half the width (SFF/2 and SFP/2 modules). Accordingly, there is also a demand for optical connectors which have an extremely compact structure and are suitable for coupling with such reduced SFF and SFP transceivers. So far, optical connectors of such a compact form of construction are not known.